


Trigger

by Jen (ConsultingWriters)



Category: James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 00Q - Freeform, Angst, Bondlock, Established Relationship, Graphic Violence, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, I break nice characters again, Loss, M/M, OC's - Freeform, Psychological Manipulation, Q Backstory, Q fakes his own death, Q!Holmes, Sexual Content, Sherlock cameos in the first chapter, Torture, for lightneverdies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-27 16:55:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingWriters/pseuds/Jen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q fakes his own suicide, and a devastated Bond needs to understand why.</p><p>
  <i>Loving Q had been water in a storm; too much. Bond had drowned in it, more willingly than he wanted to admit, dying in Q, with Q, knowing Q was drowning with him, neither wanting to go.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to lightneverfades - this is the fanfic of her EXTRAORDINARY fanvid, found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bHR8g6vUP4&feature=player_embedded#! Watch it. It is well worth it. I have tried to be as true to the video as humanly possible; thank you lightneverdies for giving me permission to write this.
> 
> In other news, next time I say I'm going to write a fanfic of a fanvid that's THIRTEEN AND A HALF MINUTES LONG, somebody whack me round the head, yes? Yes.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! Jen.

Bond sat forward, empty glass on the counter, eyes staring emptily, everything empty. He indicated for another drink, aware that the bartender was getting to the point of marginal concern; he couldn’t bring himself to care, he really couldn’t.

He could see dried blood under his fingernails. The rush of nausea faded as he swallowed another gulp of martini, his brain becoming pleasantly foggy. He folded the picture he’d been staring at for the past few hours, slipping it into his jacket pocket, resting over his heart.

His expression was impassive, but jesus, his head hurt.

_Q tugged slightly as his shirtsleeves, tangibly anxious, smiling in that faintly mocking way Bond knew too well, eyes flicking offscreen at something nobody else would ever see. “Bond, I am sorry. I know this will come as something of a shock.”_

Bond had found him slumped in the bath. The blood covered the back edge of the bath; his front was almost untouched, perfect, the collar of his gorgeous white shirt sprayed with red, chin on his chest, eyes shut, almost peaceful.

The inevitability of time.

Bond couldn’t breathe.

_“You will find me at home,” Q said, expression serious and sympathetic at once, that unfathomable expression Bond knew so well. “I’m afraid I will be dead, a gunshot through the back of my skull, self-inflicted.”_

Bond had started breathing too-harshly, his entire body shutting in on itself; he couldn’t believe how much this hurt, not since Vesper, not in so long, had he known this kind of pain. Jesus, no, _no_ , not Q, he couldn’t have gone through with it, he couldn’t have done, not Q, not his Quartermaster, oh _god_.

_“Be safe, James. I truly am sorry to do this to you,” Q continued, still smiling, very light. “Don’t be angry. James… goodbye.”_

Bond had reached for a pulse, knew he wouldn’t find one, kept trying anyway, cupping a hand around the back of his neck, pulling him forward. Oh _jesus_ , no. The pain continued to fall backwards from him, leaving him with a throbbing sense of absolute devastation.

He had pulled Q into his arms, blood coating his arms, his suit, clinging onto him with a hollow scream. He hadn’t been dead long, and that was almost more painful; he was warm, only a few degrees from being alive, and why, why the _hell_ had he found it necessary to do this, to die like this.

Bond knocked back the last of his martini. Almost steady, so _damn_ close to being steady, he made his way out of the deserted bar. Q hadn’t explained. Bond would have to find out himself, somehow.

He needed to know why.

\---

Bond turned up in MI6, still drinking heavily, but disguising it in the inimitable way only James Bond could. He poured himself a glass of whiskey in M’s office, and listened to her fail to lecture him. Jesus, M was brilliant. She somehow managed to avoid the condescension that everybody else had, and didn’t try to understand.

“I need to know that I can trust you,” she said sharply, coldly, without trying to offer false sympathy or pity.

“And you don’t?” Bond asked darkly.

“Well, it would be a pretty cold bastard if he didn’t want revenge for the death of someone he loved,” M said, acknowledging that Bond had loved him without question, and ignoring the slight flinch.

Revenge. He wanted to understand why, and whoever – whatever – had led Q to this, he would ensure nothing like it ever happened again. He would not lose anybody else, and he would somehow take out whatever it was that had lost him Q.

“Don’t worry about me,” Bond told her emotionlessly, and walked out of MI6. There was a clawing sense of finality about doing so.

\---

The cold sent air in short puffs around them. Q’s brother was similar to the original model in many respects; tall, dark-haired, angular, expression difficult to understand or interpret. He was colder though, more arrogant, more obviously aloof. Q had smiled, once in a while, smiled without malice or intent. Sherlock Holmes did not.

“You know why I’m here,” Bond told him, almost casually.

“I can only assume you are here to look into my little brother’s death,” Sherlock drawled, expression flat and merciless. Bond couldn’t help but smirk at how absurdly similar they both were; both he and Sherlock plastered over hurt with sarcasm and bitterness, simply because it was easier than being honest.

Bond had researched, listened. There were whispers everywhere, circling around Q’s death, focusing on one phrase – Bright Stone.

Sherlock looked at him, everything about his eyes completely dead, betraying nothing. Nobody was supposed to know about Bright Stone. “You should tread carefully, Mr Bond,” Sherlock told him, staring disconcertingly; Q could do that, on occasion. Staring, seeing more than Bond would know, being deconstructed in a glance. “They know when they are being hunted.”

“I’m willing to play their games,” Bond replied lightly, honestly. He had killed people before, several in the simple act of tracking down the phrase Bright Stone. _“So who are you working for?” he asked. He listened to the predictable response, and smiled sideways, watching the man topple off the edge of the building. He didn’t look back._

Sherlock continued to watch him, assessing him. “Because in the end, there is only one victor,” he completed, in answer to the question Sherlock hadn’t yet voiced. Sherlock gave a languid smile, standing to leave; he twisted about, turned to face Bond again.

“To become a Bright Stone, one must know the loss of a loved one,” Sherlock told him; for the briefest of moments, his eyes flickered with sadness, the reflection of Q’s bloodied face, wreckage, fire. His expression closed off again in a heartbeat. “The way that Q has. Or the way that _you_ have, Mr Bond. Only then will you be worthy of their love.”

Sherlock’s voice contorted on ‘worthy’, the first flash of intonation Bond had heard from him. It had been his little brother, after all, taken in by the Bright Stones.

Bond watched him, waited. Sherlock sighed; a roll of his eyes, and he slid back into his chair. Bond stayed silent, apparently the only way to coax Sherlock into speaking, and waited.

Sherlock explained in clipped, toneless sentences. The Bright Stones took loss, took anger, and exploited it. Balanced out the light in the world with darkness, the darkness they created. Those consumed by loss, by their hate and their pain, were the acolytes; and a woman, known simply as Eve, mastered them. He gave him a name, somebody to find: Ms Marion Lenoir.

Bond nodded, stood to leave. “My brother was brilliant,” Sherlock said unexpectedly, staring blankly at the space Bond had just vacated. “He should not have been a Bright Stone.”

“No, he shouldn’t have,” Bond agreed.

“Cigarette?” Sherlock offered, proffering the pack. Bond shook his head, and left, listening to Sherlock sigh out in the icy room, clouding the air around his head.

\---

Loving Q was like loving the ocean; beautiful and infinite.

_Things don’t just happen. A series of events take place, a catalogue of choices take place. An action takes place, it has consequences, all actions have consequences._

Bond wondered absently what he had done to inspire this consequence. This always happened. He fell in love, and he lost. Perhaps his action was simply to love in the first place; the simplest way to ensure a consequence, to watch the destruction.

The hurt buried itself in his chest, and lived there, pulsing outwards with each heartbeat. He couldn’t help but be angry. He had his reason, now, he had the group that had lost him Q. They took loss, and anger, and pain – and god, but he had those in spades.

The love had left a gaping emptiness. He didn’t have enough emotion in him to fill it with anything else at all.

\---

The ball swung in elegant circles of silk and satin. Bond, in a Prada suit, watched the luxury, the decadence, the overwhelmingly cloying stench of money, privilege, power and misguided responsibility.

_“Every now and then a trigger has to be pulled,” Q told him, that absurdly boyish smile quirking his face._

Bond remembered Q in moments like this. He was a weapon to be deployed; he missed the familiar murmur in his ear, the sarcastic whip of words.

Masks and velvet hid the room. The young woman on his left had been watching him for a while, speaking intermittently on her mobile, and – somewhat unsurprisingly – had taken it upon herself to approach him.

 _Or not pulled_.

“Enjoying the party, Monsieur?” she asked, smiling coquettishly, the pretty French accent, the perfectly almond eyes, dark hair curling over her shoulders.

Bond turned to her, glad she had finally taken it upon herself to approach him. “I’m actually here to see you, Ms Lenoir,” he told her; her eyes flashed dark, angry, for a terrifying, sharp second.

“Is that so?” she managed, her façade reconstructed.

“Could we talk in private?” Bond asked, a facsimile of a smile.

She smiled coyly, and Bond was far from impressed. He smiled because he needed to. “Follow me.”

\---

Ms Lenoir was a Bright Star, shining. She sold illegal weapons for extortionate prices. She had lost her husband. She was lethally beautiful. She had known from the outset that Bond was not invited, and neither was his ‘friend’. She had more money than sense or perspective, and was unflinchingly loyal to the Bright Stones.

Jose had information. Or at least, that was what he was pretending. Bond knew full well who, and what, Jose was; a double agent, a Bright Stone. He lost his two closest friends in a car accident, he himself survived by accident. Bond employed him, in the hope that he would form some laughable attempt at an ambush. In the hope that Jose could lead him closer to Eve.

“I know why you are here, Monsieur Bond,” Ms Lenoir purred, head tilting slightly.

“Then I won’t take away much of your time,” Bond said formally; there seemed little need to pretend, any longer. They both knew who they were, what they were, what the other wanted. The constant pretence got wearing after a point.

Her eyes were surprisingly sympathetic. “You’re here to see Eve,” she said, not a question in any sense.

Eve. Le Noir. The swelling evening that filtered into bleakly dark night, a sharp juxtaposition with the Bright Stones. They had ceased to be bright, encapsulated darkness.

“Where can I find her?” he asked, voice hard, as his phone rang again; something had happened, was wrong. Jose should not have made any further contact, they were expected to rendezvous later.

“You cannot find her,” she told him, almost sadly. “It is always she who comes to you first.”

Bond cannot believe that; the lonely, angry, desperate masses who became Bright Stones must seek her out. Not by name, perhaps, but they seek something – and ‘Eve’ slips into the remnants of their existences, and gives them something to supposedly ‘live’ for.

“Then perhaps you could give her a message from me,” Bond asked rhetorically, guarded. His eyes suddenly came to light, burning, angry, and he misses Q more than anything he could say. He powers Bond’s words. “I’m giving you the first move. Whether you take it or not, the game will still be played.”

She smiled with a hint of arrogance, born of knowing her position, and believing herself untouchable. Bond knew his message would reach Eve; that much was a certainty. He merely needed to wait.

And, in the interim, find what had happened to Jose.

\---

Jose had been working at the opposite end of London, in a building that technically belonged to Ms Lenoir – although naturally, not under her name.

 _Black_ , the message read, and Bond smiled grimly; he hadn’t realised how easy it would be. He waited another half hour or so, stole a car, drove to the building.

He was expecting an ambush. That was what he would do, under the circumstances; create an ambush situation, capture Bond. There was no point in killing him, not when he was close to knowing, and had what Bright Stones needed; hate, filling the void his love had once lived him.

Jose’s tracker placed him on the second floor. Bond took the lift. He didn’t see the point in wasting energy on the stairs; they would ambush him either way, he was rather depending on that.

He stepped into the room, to find Ms Lenoir, and nobody else. That was certainly a surprise; not an ambush in the slightest, but a single woman.

Ms Lenoir sold munitions, and was legendarily good at using them. They aimed at one another, an impasse. The air was silent, heavy.

Two men dragged Jose in; he looked intact, mostly uninjured, which was a pleasant surprise. He had honestly expected the Bright Stones to have taken the opportunity of damaging him. Bond assumed that they believed he had turned, and was of some interest to Bond alive.

“A friend of yours?” Ms Lenoir asked, voice delicate, swinging the gun to Jose’s forehead.

“No-one of importance,” Bond told her, quite honestly. Jose had lied to Bond about his past, about who he was; and in any case, the Bright Stones were unlikely to kill their own.

Her expression was merciless. “I _will_ pull this trigger, Monsieur Bond,” she snarled at him.

Bond’s eyebrow raised sharply. “Then do it. Kill one of your own,” he gambled. Jose’s eyes widened incrementally. “I’ve known who you were for a while now, Jose. But I could be wrong.”

“Will you risk it?” Ms Lenoir asked, both hands on the gun, ready to shoot.

Bond shrugged. “You’re not giving me much of a choice,” he pointed out.

Her laugh was short and cold. “There is always a choice,” she contradicted without hesitation. “Like you have made yours, by coming here.”

Bond began to get the clawing feeling that there was something he had missed. That maybe, possibly, he had got this very wrong. He flinched incrementally, as Ms Lenoir shot Jose through the leg.

Jose collapsed forward with a scream, blood streaming from his thigh. Bond’s eyebrows crunched together; he didn’t understand, it still wasn’t making sense.

“You are right, Monsieur Bond,” Ms Lenoir said; Bond felt a sudden surge of triumph, which faded rapidly with each further word. “Jose _was_ a Bright Stone; but he had little light to begin with.”

“ _Was_ a Bright Stone?”

“Oh yes. His betrayal has been quite the disaster,” she said, stalking around Jose, who was panting frantically. Understanding registered with a sudden rush; chastising himself for his own stupidity, he started thinking frantically as Ms Lenoir kept talking. “But he will have Eve to answer to now.”

Jose glanced up with naked terror. There was no doubt that Eve was not somebody he wanted to ‘answer to’; the Bright Stones had a whispered reputation for torture, and betrayal was not anything they would accept or condone.

Bond waited for Jose to catch his eye; the man looked up, expression slightly pleading. Bond nodded.

Ms Lenoir’s jaw tightened lividly; before she or her minions could do anything further, Jose’s body collapsed limply. Bond didn’t regret it in the slightest. Rather his death, then allow him to be tortured.

“You…”

Bond shot the minions first, ducking as Ms Lenoir fired several rounds in his direction. The shot that killed her went through her throat. She died relatively quickly, and Bond was quite satisfied that few would mourn her.

It was shortly after that evening that Bond stopped bothering with a body count.


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello guys! Thank you to everybody who is liking/supporting this - here's the next installment. 
> 
> Bond reaches an understanding concerning the Bright Stones. Bond remembers what being with Q means.
> 
> Q is not, strictly speaking, dead. Bond wonders if he's losing his mind.

It took another fortnight to finally reach Eve herself.

The Bright Stones defended their own; more specifically, they defended Eve. He had taken out her vanguard, as far as he could work out, as well as several other high-ranking officers of the Bright Stones.

“You’ve killed many of my brightest potentials,” Eve told her, dark eyes blinking languidly at him. Bond smiled icily; he had removed dozens, now, the sharp light shut out of them, left to rot. “But none have exceeded my expectations as you have, Mr Bond.”

“I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you in any way,” Bond told her obsequiously, his smile painted carefully.

Eve hesitated a moment, looking behind them to a fibreglass construction, jagged edges converging inwards, to a bleak emptiness nobody could reach. It was infinite to watch, drawing the eye into nothingness.

“This is a black hole,” Eve told him, smiling thinly. “It consumes matter, sucks it in and crushes it beyond existence. When I first heard that, I thought – that’s evil, at its most pure. Something that drags you in, crushes you, and makes you… nothing.

Bond is almost inclined to agree; he cannot imagine being made nothing, cannot imagine ceasing to exist like this. “There can never be just nothing,” he says, because he needs to deny it, he needs to know that he will never be lost to nothingness.

“Don’t you believe in evil?” Eve asked.

“What I believe in is irrelevant. There is only the outcome. Effect. And the consequences,” Bond said, feeling Q in his voice, even in the way his posture unconsciously mimicked his lost love; his shoulders slumped slightly, lost the intentional tension he forced into them on a daily basis.

He saw Q’s smile when he blinked.

His hands created infinity, tracing the edges of something with no end. Paper, twisted, slid into a knot that can never end. Like a more complex circle, the damage and danger, and the ultimate fact, the incontrovertible _fact_ , that it will never end.

“Ah,” she breathed; she understood, finally. “Our beloved Q. How well did you truly know him?”

Bond’s brain flicked through memories of Q, everything he had ever been told, or shown. 

Q, playing the piano, smiling to himself like a successful child, delighted. Bond had watched him until time stretched into hours; Q lost track, and Bond let him, let sonatas breed in quiet space, hands joined in melody. He had played since he was very young, hadn’t seen a piano since the crash, his fingers remembering without conscious intention.

Q, typing strings of code to time itself, letting computers consume three hours of work into an instantaneous reaction. So small, so valuable; Bond would clean his weapons, Q shooting mildly concerned glances in the direction of his equipment, typing with a passionate frenzy.

Q knew computers. He lived and breathed them. He grew up, he learned the mechanics, and began to develop them himself. He wrote programmes. He developed technology. He dived into the intricacies of machines and wires, and let himself survive there.

Q had told him stories of being a child. His brother was too cold, too absent. Q himself had been unnaturally brilliant, in a way nobody seemed keen on understanding barring his parents themselves. They let him work, they led him, they loved him.

“He came to me after he lost his parents in the plane crash,” Bond had never asked too closely after the crash, sensing loss that had reached incoherency. “He always seemed… lost to me.” 

Q, glancing to Bond in the middle of night from his computer, incomparable sadness written in his eyes; Bond had tried to lead him away, brush kisses against his closed eyelids, trying to wipe out the pain that went bone-deep, further than Bond could reach.

Q, working until exhaustion literally laid him flat, grasping towards his computer, trying to keep himself tied to something he knew, something familiar and safe. Bond made a valiant effort to pull him away, illustrate that there was freedom elsewhere, that Q could be free, Bond would help. If Q could allow him to.

“I wanted to help him. After what happened he had a number of vexations, and I helped him in several ways,” Eve explained. She had given a desperate, heartbroken boy a purpose, and a renewed reason to live. Aborted everything sane, twisted it into anger and revenge.

Eve was far from resentful, or apologetic. “Love is the most potent poison. It flourishes through your veins like a disease, causing you to go blind. But if you’ve been betrayed by love for far too long, your only true passion now resides in hate,” she explained. Her pain was deep-seated, and constant; whatever she had lived through, it had warped her out of all perspective.

“Do you think so poorly of the human heart?”

“We are born weak, Mr Bond. The very nature of our existence is chaotic. Love is the catalyst of all undoings. I merely guide those who’ve lost their way to the right path,” she told him, and Bond fought against asking whether Q’s suicide had been ‘the right path’. 

Q, eaten alive by his grief, chain-smoking in a motel bedroom where nobody would be able to track him down. Bond saw him for a moment in Eve, her sadness almost genuine; her hand, extending to Q, as she offered a thin, drawn boy something to live for.

Q, taking her hand with his jaw tight, strung out and angry and grateful. She showed him a world, let him fall into it with abandon. Q had been so much _better_ than that, but she had talked him into it, sold him a future – and the boy had let it take him over.

“I bring balance to the world by giving it darkness. I _create_ the shadows you fight against.”

“You merely manipulate the darkness,” Bond shot back at her. “We are born with those shadows.”

“Tell me, Mr Bond,” Eve asked, taking a few steps towards him, head cocking to one side, assessing him. “Why do you think Q fell in love with a cold-hearted bastard like yourself? Is it because you shine _so bright?_ ”

Bond’s lip curled in a livid snarl. He wanted to snap back so many answers, not least that he still didn’t know if Q _had_ loved him. His death was perhaps the most painful thing Bond recalled living through. If Q had loved him, he wouldn’t have killed himself. He couldn’t have done.

Eve watched him with pity, as Bond ran out of air, choking in silence. Her hand reached out to him, offering him everything he wanted; revenge, and opportunity, and reason. His world was falling apart, and she could see it.

The Möbius strip fell through his fingers.

\---

 _The sunlight streamed through the windows. Q’s eyes remained closed, blocking out everything for a few brief moments_.

\---

Loving Q had been water in a storm; too much. Bond had drowned in it, more willingly than he wanted to admit, dying in Q, with Q, knowing Q was drowning with him, neither wanting to go.

The thought made him angry. He had given his world to somebody else, and it had died with him, and of Q’s own volition – Q had taken away Bond’s lifeline, after Vesper, after M, after more loss than he wanted to remember and more pain than he wanted to live through.

The sex was imaginative, and varied, and frequent. They forgot through one another, with one another, and learned to remember in gradual increments, safe.

Q’s lips pressed against his inner wrist, his temples, his neck. Q’s spine pooled shadow in the dim light, Bond parted lips panting soft breaths against Q’s shoulder. Bond’s hands cupped Q’s face, drawing kisses from him gently, ferociously, lovingly.

Q smiled at him, bit his lip unintentionally so it flushed a gorgeous pink-red, choked Bond’s name. The only person left who called him James, and knew what that name meant. Knew everything it held, and treasured it for what it was; a past, present, future that was theirs, now.

James didn’t know Q’s name, and didn’t need to. It didn’t matter. It never had. Q’s past was something he contracted around, kept tight to his chest and didn’t betray. Bond knew what he needed to know, and Q let him guess everything else.

Q’s body twisted around him. “ _I like feeling I can protect you_ ,” he told Bond once, when asked why he clung so tightly, why Q wanted to be so close to him, all of the time. Bond had twisted to him, kissed him awkwardly, turned back on his side.

When he woke in the night, Q was deeply asleep. He still hadn’t let go, his face buried in Bond’s shoulder.

Bond realised, in that moment, that he was in love with Q.

\---

_Q’s eyes flickered open, contracting in the bright, almost white light. He looked over the edge of the bed, neck arching, swan-like, towards the noise he could swear he could hear by the door._

_He was becoming increasingly accustomed to there being nobody there._

_He sat up in bed, one hand against his forehead, running along his face to his chin, staring out the window._

_Venice was beautiful._

\---

Venice was Bond’s favourite city in the world. Despite the constant, cloying loss that surrounded the place, he couldn’t help but love its beauty.

He had promised to take Q here, one day. He was here now to chase shadows. He needed to take down the Bright Stones, and he could not do that simply by killing Eve. That would be easy, certainly, but far from effective; she would be martyred, and the Bright Stones would continue unendingly.

He needed to expose them.

He had found names, contacts. He was ready to start coercing, killing, whichever was appropriate.

The whispers spoke of a young man. Clever, brilliant. Excellent at computers. He didn’t have a name, but an initial.

Q knew how to manipulate whispers; he waited, letting Bond lure himself to a deserted canal. He waited, face covered in shadow, knowing Bond would come. Knowing that even the _chance_ would be enough to draw him here, to check.

Footsteps tripped downwards. Bond had been at an official function, tracing Bright Stone members; the white tux reminded Q of a night several lifetimes ago, Bond in a white tux and Q in his best black suit, and uncomfortable black bowtie choking him. M had insisted they attend, and attend they had, albeit under duress.

Water rippled between them, throwing dappled light across Bond’s bloodless expression. He stayed there for a prolonged moment, eyes wide, grasping the railing like he was afraid he would fall in the canal. It was so easy to drown, with Q.

Q stayed still. Bond sought, found, the nearest bridge, and started to run to it; he was there, he could see something that was almost Q, and he would not let this apparition fade.

Q’s heart beat too-fast in his chest, and he lost his nerve, disappearing into the Venetian night.

Bond was so beautiful.

\---

Bond knew he was there. He had to be there, somewhere.

It was impossible to search Venice at night; too easy to get lost, too few people, too many people to watch and ask questions, and no signs to follow to track down Q. He went to his hotel, slept for two hours, showered, vomited himself back into the heaving streets and started chasing whispers once again.

Q’s organised whispers gave him a place, but no name, and no face. He followed them. The previous night had shown him – Q was there, somewhere, Q had to be there.

He briefly juggled with the possibility that he had finally lost his mind. He decided it just didn’t matter any more. It wouldn’t change anything he was doing, after all. Crazy or not, he would chase the shadows into hell if he needed to.

\---

Q let Bond chase him, guiding him into the small room he’d rented out. Not easily done, in Venice, but with the right words and actions in the right places, it was achievable.

Bond hadn’t had a good look at him yet, which was safest. Q would need to check him for Bright Stone equipment; he had been hurt, more hurt than Q had realised he would be. With the exposure to Eve, Q would not have been surprised to learn Bond had been lost to them.

And if that was so, then Q would need to exit quickly, leaving Bond with no genuine evidence that he had ever seen Q.

Bond threw himself into the room. He didn’t see who was there, who wielded the thin sting that laced through his blood, and left the world spinning, trickling to black. 

Q breathed in Bond, felt his warmth, his extraordinary _there_ -ness, and was suddenly overwhelmed. 

He left Bond for a moment, paced. Eventually shifted him to a more comfortable location, placed a pillow under his head. He left Bond alone, paced, checked, double-checked. Curled in his desk chair, and watched Bond sleep. Kissed Bond’s forehead, swallowed back hiccupping sadness, sat down again, waited.

\---

Bond’s bruised, tired eyes cracked open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehe. Cliffhangers. Thank you so much for reading :D


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some explanations, and about time too.
> 
> Thank you to everyone reading/supporting! This all belongs to lighthopelove, as I know you're aware. Dialogue is taken verbatim from the vid. Jen.

Bond focused on the ceiling, keeping very still. He hadn’t been drugged in a while, which made a nice change; waking up in odd places with no recollection of having got there was something he had hoped not to experience again.

He remembered a glimpse of Q, in the shades of blue that textured the night, and he gasped slightly, inaudibly.

Bond sat up, focused on the ceiling. There was somebody with him; but he wasn’t tied up, or injured, so he was probably not in contact with anybody who wanted him dead.

The man was facing the opposite wall, and Bond knew, he just _knew_.

He looked away, straightening his suit. He stood up, brushing off any acquired dirt, trying to keep calm. Bond watched for a moment, utterly silent. He would not instigate this, he simply wouldn’t. He needed somebody else to make the goddamn effort.

Q’s head curled towards him. He looked so different; older, somehow, older than Bond had ever seen him before. He had always looked older without his glasses, but it was highlighted by the high-necked black shirt, his pale skin bright, the slight growth of moustache giving him another few years of age.

“Well-played, Q,” Bond said, voice dry, merciless. “You had me fooled completely.”

Q had the decency to look guilty, glancing to the floor and back again. The more Bond watched him, the less he liked this Q, this thing that was so _nearly_ his Q.

Bond hardly looked himself either, and Q’s heart was breaking a little under the strain. He looked tired, angular. Thinner. He was more transparently dangerous like this, the impression of a man who had nothing left to lose. 

“Seducing a double-oh agent, faking your own death,” Bond shot at him, with intentional vitriol; Q’s expression crumpled very slightly.

“It’s not what it looks like, James,” Q told him; it was Bond’s turn to crumple faintly. Q’s voice, _jesus_ , his voice, after so many weeks and months. Even hearing his own first name was a breathtaking change; his contacts all called him some variation on ‘Mr Bond’, and he didn’t bother giving them the privilege of a first name.

He nearly shook his head out of sheer instinct, denying everything he could. “Why should I hear you out?” he asked, pain turned to anger, to defensive fury, the emptiness where Q had been filled with cement, weighing him down. “Your death nearly destroyed me, Q. And now you’re here to give me false hope again.”

Q could barely meet his eyes, which did admittedly give Bond a notable twinge of satisfaction. Q would never understand the gravity of what he had done; Bond couldn’t help the rising desire to hurt Q, just a fraction of how he himself had been hurt.

“I’d rather live without it,” Bond completed, as Q’s eye-line wandered up to his. His discomfort showed through, his flickering gaze darting away every couple of seconds, expression apologetic and pleading.

Bond closed his eyes, shaking his head. He should never have chased the shadows. To be honest, he didn’t know what he had expected to find; he had wanted Q alive so blindly, that he hadn’t really considered what would happen if he actually _was_ alive.

What the hell had he done?

“Please,” Q asked, in a fragile voice. “Give me a chance to explain.”

Bond’s eyes snapped back to him, as Q started to stride around the small room, trying to distract himself a little, grabbing his jacket and shrugging it for lack of anything else to do. He leant forward on the back of a chair, lips parted in an oddly disjointed exhale. He didn’t wait for Bond’s answer.

“I never expected to fall for an MI6 agent, let alone a double-oh,” Q explained, craving tea more than he could say, valiantly holding Bond’s gaze. “My instructions were simple: infiltrate MI6, gain their trust, and keep an eye out for any triggers that could be used against the secret service.”

Bond stared at him. He really hoped Q was going to manage something better than that.

“In truth, I was there to sabotage Eve’s plans,” Q told him; Bond’s expression still hadn’t wavered, and Q was beginning to find this marginally too difficult. He would give anything for just a _flicker_ of expression. “She had called the hit on my parent’s deaths. Exploited my naivety, and shaped me into what I am now.”

Q may have imagined the slight softening in his eyes; Bond’s shoulders lifted in another breath, and on the prolonged exhale: “It still doesn’t explain why you faked your death.”

Hands on hips, he looked at Bond with uncomfortable sadness. “I did it to protect you,” he told Bond, his voice cracking almost imperceptibly.

Bond would never know how it felt. Cradling a cold gun in warm hands, finding the drugs necessary to make it work, the prosthetics, the blood, contacting a select handful of MI6 to make it plausible in autopsy, explaining to M – who had been angry in a way that scared Q to think about – and the act itself.

Filming a single video to Bond that would serve as his goodbye, injecting himself, using the last moments he had to move to their bathroom. The drug throbbing through his veins as he thought of Bond, whom he would never be able to see again, and would never be able to explain this to. 

Bond always smelt of cologne and paper and gunpowder, and Q had never felt so loved as when Bond cupped his face in his hands, and breathed out his name like a prayer, and he needed to remember, every detail that only Q would ever know about Bond. The way he smiled when nobody was watching, the songs he sang to himself when only Q could hear. Things that a file, a folder, would never be able to contain. The intangible brilliances of loving somebody so entirely it starts to hurt.

Q was surprisingly calm as he stepped into the bath, settled himself, the metal warming by increments under his fingers. He was frightened. 

He closed his eyes.

“In the midst of my mission, I found that I had created a ‘master’ programme that could ultimately be used to hack into anything, to steal any secrets, and erase everything if one wished to do so,” Q told Bond, still pacing the room, shooting glances at Bond’s marble expression and praying it would break, show Q just a little of James, _his_ James.

He had missed James so much.

“I couldn’t risk Eve getting her hands on it. Because I’m the key,” Q explained; Bond had a sudden, horrible glance into the _weight_ Q was carrying, the knowledge that he alone held the key to removing Eve, the woman who had _killed his parents_. Q was not a naturally vengeful person. “I knew what I had to do to destroy her, but I also needed your help.”

He could be a vengeful person. Bond had absolutely no idea any more. This was not Q. This was a man wearing Q’s face, bearing only the faintest resemblance to a man Bond had loved, once.

“You used me to kill all her guards,” Bond realised aloud. “I was your trigger.”

_Every now and then…”_

“Now that you had your silver bullet, all you needed now was the right moment to release it. And you had it already.”

“ _… A trigger has to be pulled_.

“So… why did you come back, instead?” Bond asked; Q’s face was crumbling in on itself, fine lines forming on his temples, across his forehead. 

Q looked up at him, fracturing.

\---

**Twenty-four hours later…**

\---

They landed back in the UK after twenty-two hours. The rest was spent in Q’s rooms in Venice.

They tasted water, and neither minded.

Bond had taken it upon himself to drug Q for most of the flight, given that the boy was absolutely hysterical. They had, however, agreed that they needed to be in London; there was enough evidence to suggest Eve was there, and in any case, Q would be better off protected by MI6 than trying his luck in Venice, on his own.

Q knew how the dosage worked, naturally; he woke up during the landing, unfortunately. Bond’s fingers were unlikely to recover from Q’s terrified squeezing, as they touched down on British soil.

If Q told him ‘never again’, Bond wouldn’t argue at all.

Bond took him to a hotel; nobody knew Q was in the UK, they had covered it quite well on the flight, used Q’s secondary passport. They checked in to a double-room.

Bond had returned to the flat they had once shared, after Q’s body had been removed, only once. He had no belongings he cared about enough to keep. But he had tried to find Q’s ‘Q10’ mug, hadn’t been able to find it, smashed every piece of crockery in the kitchen, broken down on the floor and screamed for two hours, almost without stopping.

Q had given the mug to M for safekeeping, along with Bond’s engraved hipflask. He couldn’t bring himself to feel guilty about the latter; Bond didn’t treasure possessions much, as a general rule, and he needed something to keep him tethered to Bond. Anything.

The hipflask smelt of cologne and paper, and Q kept it close, warding off evil.

Bond left to MI6, to check in with M, and get backup. He had called into MI6 earlier that day, met with a guarded and suspicious M who was more than a little sceptical about the status of an agent who – by his own admission – had gone rogue. He eventually conceded defeat, on the grounds that Bond came into MI6 for a debrief.

It was safest for Q to remain where he was – out of harms way, nobody aware that he was in the UK. The less he showed his face, the better.

They beat down the hotel door. Q tried to escape, was caught halfway, given a nasty blow to the back of the head; it didn’t knock him out, but dazed him enough to make him manoeuvrable. After a certain point, he went with it; there was nothing he could do, he was grossly outnumbered.

He thought of Bond, and was pathetically grateful for the time they’d had. Twenty-two hours with him. More than he’d honestly thought he’d have with Bond again; he had resigned himself to not being able to see, speak, touch Bond again.

Bond ran; the chaos of vehicles, the chaos of whatever the Bright Stones had done this time, surrounded him. This was for his benefit; they had caused chaos, caused hell, to distract him. The Underground network was similarly damaged, disgorging streams of passengers into the too-bright sunlight, Bond’s eyes darting around, trying to get bearings.

He was midway between MI6 and Q. M called him; the hotel had been infiltrated. Q-branch found footage of their very-much-alive ex-Quartermaster being dragged into a lift. They had no footage to imply they had left the building.

_They took him to the basement of the hotel, his vision beginning to re-stabilise again from the blow to the head. He lost his glasses somewhere in transit, distressingly. Still dizzy, he was thrown forward, twisted around, forced into a chair. Stared up at a man he didn’t recognise through the distorted haze of myopia, and hoped he looked defiant._

Bond needed to be on site, to work out what was happening; MI6 would give him help remotely, even if he was currently devoid of any good equipment, or communications technology.

He had to find Q, before they started hurting him. If anybody touched Q, he would kill them. He would also make sure it took them a very long time to die.

Still running, he called Eve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!! Kudos/comments are golddust.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus, the end.
> 
> Bear in mind warnings - a lot of them kick in with a vengeance in this chapter.
> 
> I'm trying to emulate the mood of the original fanvid; so scenes are intercut, and I've tried to mimic that in a fic, more so even than in previous chapters. I hope it works, and I hope you like it!

“At last, Mr Bond,” Eve smiled, her satisfaction manifestly obvious; Bond’s lips moved in a thin snarl, despite himself. She had Q, then. Alright. Then everything from this moment onwards became simpler.

_Q could not deny that he was more than a little bit scared. He knew what Bright Stones could – would – do for information, especially the information they wanted him to give._

“You listen to me very carefully,” Bond told her, his voice brittle and angry and tangibly lethal. He knows she is smiling, very slightly, and he _hates her_ for that. This is not a game, this is everything Bond has ever tried and failed to play for. “You harm Q in any way and _I will kill you_. You won’t live to see another day.”

_They asked for the password. Not overwhelmingly surprising. Q took a breath, relishing being able to do so easily. He had seen Bright Stone victims before, people who had information, or just those who had betrayed the Bright Stone initiatives and needed dispatching._

_They needed the information, preferably. If Q refused to give it, then they would kill him, and his programme with him. The Bright Stones would continue to survive, potentially thrive._

_Bond needed to move bloody quickly. Q took another handful of breaths._

“I’m coming for you,” Bond told Eve; she believed him. Bond would never stop searching, and she would never be found. So many years since the Bright Stones had started; she knew how to disappear, too easily. 

The Bright Stones had lived before her; she had brought organisation, expansion, but they could live without her there. She was their facilitator. If she died, her organisation would live on, move from strength to strength.

Bond was damned if he would let that happen.

_A blow to his solar plexus; Q curled around the fist, doubling over, hands clutching the chair arms spasmodically. He glared up at his captors, trying to convey the sentiment that there wasn’t a hope in hell of him releasing the information, so for the love of_ god _, let him go._

“You’ve lost, Mr Bond. I _win_ ,” Eve told him, delighted and cruel, like a child pulling wings off a fly; one by one, causing trembling pain, watching something small die by increments.

She had known about the programme, of course. She coveted it; she could destroy all forms of order with it, of course she wanted it. Nevertheless, Q was expendable; whichever way, she still won. With or without the password, she could remove Q – the greatest threat to her organisation in living memory – and either possess, or destroy, the programme that he could wreck her with.

Bond wasn’t even important. He didn’t matter. He was, at best, an annoyance; he had removed her guards, many of her Bright Stone acolytes, but did not – and indeed could not – threaten the whole organisation, on his own.

She hung up on him. A message from MI6 informed him that Q was believed to still be somewhere in the hotel. Bond broke into a run, utilising every piece of training he could remember from any point in his life, trying to propel himself forward faster, more efficiently. There was no time.

M texted him; they had access to the basement footage. They urged Bond to hurry; Bond didn’t make any response other than to keep flat-out running, faster than he had known himself capable of, while in the basement of the hotel, Q gave a sudden cry.

They threw the chair over, Q disgorged across the floor, sprawled, hands reaching out to grab him again, another face in the doorway. His head bounced against the floor, a cut opening by his temple, blood trickling down his cheek.

Q vaguely recognised the new arrival. He was clearly important; everybody backed off for a moment, giving Q space to breathe, for the man to examine him in detail.

Breathing was becoming remarkably difficult. His chest felt like needles were being lanced through his lungs. The sharp ‘crack’ he had heard indicated that something was broken, but he really didn’t care to examine it too closely.

He crawled onto his knees, his movements slightly uncoordinated, still controlled.

“You won’t get the password,” he told them simply, reaching towards the righted chair. The velvet was soft under his fingers. A slight textural distraction, as he continued speaking, his words a final defence. He had only ever had words. Words and codes that lived and died, ideas that faded, and this, the last thing he had left to protect. 

Q forced himself to standing through pride; this man intended to break him apart, and Q would not give him the satisfaction of being half-gone already. “No matter how hard you choose to beat me, you’ll never get it,” he told the man, who smiled a grim, humourless smile that spoke of the people he’d heard say that before.

This was going to hurt, and Bond was nowhere near.

His torturer explained in clipped words precisely what would happen next, what he expected from Q. Q had MI6 training and sheer willpower on his side, and some sense that Bond would come, because Bond always bloody well _did_ come.

Q’s spine started to crawl. A beating was infantile; they were only beginning, and then he was told. Eve had told them specifically what to do to him, and she had quite the vicious streak.

His hands, they were going to take his _hands_. Even if by some miracle he survived this, if they did as they were threatening – breaking every bone in his hands – he would not be able work again. His fingers were unlikely to regain full dexterity, and he would spend weeks, months, waiting to move again.

The cruellest torture Eve could come up with. Q screamed, trying to dive at the man opposite him, caught before he could take so much a step. The wrestled him backwards, forcing him back into a chair, a table to his right. Jesus, oh jesus, no.

_“I asked too much of you, and that has cost us both dearly,” Q had told him, looking sad, regretful, painfully honest._

He fought as they grabbed his hand, pinning it against the table; they pried his fingers loose from the tight fist he’d formed, as he swore in several languages, promising to kill them in the most creative way he could possibly think of, terror turning his thoughts briefly white.

“You’re not doing yourself any favours by staying silent,” he was told, and breathed carefully, slowly. Panicking would help, would not change anything. This was inevitable, and if he panicked, he was more likely to break, tell them whatever they wanted. “By the time we’re done, you won’t have a voice. Better speak while you still can, Q.”

Q spat on the floor in front of him, a small gobbet of saliva and blood. The man smiled again.

Bond was close, but nowhere near close enough, and Q’s voice runs and runs in his head, telling him all the ways he has failed across the years, the way he has failed to keep those that matter safe. Q didn’t fail, he never failed.

_I came back because you also have the potential of darkness that Eve craved. I’d rather reveal myself to you than let you go blind with hate._

Q managed to save him, and Bond couldn’t get to him, couldn’t reach him.

A hard slap to the face; the tears started without permission, Q’s breathing fracturing. His fingernails gouge into the wood, still mercilessly held, and he really hopes he will pass out because god knows he doesn’t want to be conscious for this.

His body convulsed, and he swallowed a surge of bile. He didn’t pass out. He screamed, of course, in a sharp burst that left him breathless. Breathing, just breathing, tears slipping, fuck, _fuck_ , it hurts.

Everything is briefly white.

He falls from the chair, and they start kicking him. It’s really rather feeble compared to the blinding pain in his hand. He will not work for MI6 again.

At this rate, he won’t work _anywhere_ again.

He won’t say a word. He will not let them take this from him. Bond has to come, he has to be here.

He has to be here.

They’re going to kill him. Shit. _Shit_. This wasn’t the plan. He doesn’t want to die, _jesus_ , he doesn’t want to die. 

_“James.”_

There is nobody there, and he talks anyway, because he has to. He has to talk to somebody, because he can see blood and taste blood and smell blood and is swallowing blood, and he is dying. He wonders if they’ve realised that yet, if they’re well trained enough to know that he’s going to die.

_“I’m sorry for everything”_

He is propped against the wall and asked questions. He doesn’t really understand what they’re saying, he’s lost the ability to comprehend questions any more.

Bond crept down the corridor with gun extended. He could hear voices, loud voices. Two that he could count, but he would wager on another one or two being there; too many were unlikely in a Bright Stones torture unit.

He pushed open the door with one hand, his attention brought immediately to the floor; he could intake the scene in a fraction of a second, Q lying slumped against the wall, his breathing fractured, blood across his face, limbs at splayed angles.

Bond shot everyone. He didn’t care if they had reasons, or excuse. He certainly didn’t need them to start lecturing or bleating at him. He killed them cleanly and quickly, before collapsing by Q’s side.

He called MI6 backup as he knelt, examining the mangled remains of Q’s hand, cupping Q’s face incredibly carefully and hearing the younger man sob slightly. Bond was almost certain he was speaking, but couldn’t work out what he was saying, and he had to listen to Q, who was trying make a sentence with a voice that barely worked.

“The password…”

_Q’s lips pressed against his inner wrist, his temples, his neck._

“… is….”

_Q’s spine pooled shadow in the dim light, Bond parted lips panting soft breaths against Q’s shoulder._

“… you.”

_Bond’s hands cupped Q’s face, drawing kisses from him gently, ferociously, lovingly._

Bond cradled him, held him like he had held Q’s body all those weeks and months ago, rocked him very slightly. Neither of them spoke any further. Bond saw the moment Q’s eyes stopped seeing, stopped focusing, the brilliant light behind his eyes fading out.

Bond gave an abrupt gasp.

Q was limp. Bond laid his body across the floor, knees slightly bent. He took a moment to wipe some of the blood away, close his eyes with a delicate tenderness, move his hair out of his face. He wondered, briefly, where Q’s glasses had gone.

He had been half-blind for the whole ordeal. It didn’t make it worse. Nothing really could.

Bond brushed kisses against Q’s forehead. He looked calm now. His facial features had relaxed entirely, giving Q the soft, flawlessly beautiful look he managed to capture while asleep. At peace. He hadn’t quite managed that expression last time; drugs could only go far to imitate death.

This was Q lost entirely.

Bond laid a hand on his cheek, and cried expressionlessly over Q’s frail body. The boy had died for love. He had died, to keep Bond safe. He had died, coming out of hiding, again for Bond. Died, to take revenge on the organisation that killed his parents.

How tremendously implausible. The Quartermaster of MI6, dying for love.

\---

Bond drove through dirt tracks, the four wheel drive perfect under his control. The phone rang; he had been expecting the call, was prepared to deal with it.

“You have something of mine,” Eve trilled at him, coy and flirtatious and angrier than Bond could imagine. “And you will give it to me, one way or another.”

“You’ve lost control, Eve,” Bond told her simply, phone clamped to his ear, jaw clenched slightly. She had killed Q, turned him into something unrecognisable, then tortured him to death; he would show no mercy. “The truth is out there now, along with all your dirty little secrets.”

“What are you talking about?” she snapped, suddenly brittle, suddenly frantic.

Bond smiled to himself, glancing out at the road. A nondescript town, a nondescript place. Somewhere to disappear, to hide. “You’ve been exposed.”

“No. You’re _lying_!” she shrieked, and Bond couldn’t help but laugh, cruel, almost childish, almost petty.

“Now all the devils you’ve created will come to hunt you down,” he told her, enjoying his moment to be vicious. He wouldn’t need to kill her himself, wouldn’t need to martyr her to a lost cause; no, she would now die at the hands of her minions. The people she corrupted.

Q’s programme had been magnificent in its simplicity. It broke into the databases of the Bright Stones, found every piece of information it held, and broadcast it. The people whose lives had been damaged or destroyed, those who had been moulded to Eve’s doctrine, had lost their personalities or futures or loved ones.

The damaged people she had cultivated had a new focus for hate. Hate fuelled, quite completely, by their loves. She would not last the week.

“ _NO_ ,” she screamed, and Bond could hear that she was in tears, speechless and terrified, a blank contradiction her only hope. They would find her. She had bred ruthless, dangerous people; they would not stop until they found her.

“Goodbye, Eve.”

Bond hung up, threw the phone onto the seat, ignored it. It was time to move on. He had lost too much through his life. He couldn’t keep living his life like this, so he wouldn’t. He didn’t have to, and wouldn’t. The ghosts wouldn’t leave him alone for as long as he stayed tied to a life he could no longer bear.

He smiled grimly, and drove into nowhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to everybody who has read/commented/kudos'd.
> 
> This fic is for lightneverfades, because she is amazing, and this was her fanvid, and I can never thank her enough for letting me write this. It is also for everybody who's supported this throughout, you guys are fabulous.
> 
> It is also for Lex, because my writing always is.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are kudos are gratefully received, I love you all dearly.


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